


Seven Letters

by NeitherEverNorNever



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Other, also vanya causing the apocalypse is what she deserves, ben wanted to be a cook when he grew up and you can't take that away from me, canon-typical levels of angst and abuse, well sort of, when they were kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeitherEverNorNever/pseuds/NeitherEverNorNever
Summary: Vanya Hargreeves has been down in a soundproof cell for nearly a week now. Dad told her that she was sick, and she's worried that he's right. On a completely unrelated note, she wishes she could practice her abilities.Instead, one day, Mom comes down to deliver her breakfast as well as a few letters from her family. Of course, being eight, the Academy children aren't writing quality literature, but they don't need to be when you feel so far away from home...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Seven Letters

**Author's Note:**

> first fic for the fandom can i get a wahoo?!

Vanya wakes up to the sounds of the outside world coming back to her. She can hear the rhythmic clack-clack of Mom’s heels as the door opens to her new room with a slight creak. All at once, the world beyond her small little cell with its soundproof walls comes back to her, and she nearly cries with relief. Maybe today they’ll let her out. Maybe today they’ll let her play with Allison and Five and all of the other Academy children again. Maybe Dad will come back and they could practice again…

It wasn’t her fault that she had gotten sick last week. She didn’t even feel ill, but Dad was strict in saying that she had to be kept away from everyone “for their safety.”

“Breakfast!” Mom says, her arms jerkingly setting down a tray with a bowl of oatmeal on it. “There’s even a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon in it! Ben suggested it.”

Vanya smiles a small, uncertain smile. Ben always had fun little suggestions for food. She remembered the time when he sprinkled some pepper and paprika on their scrambled eggs - with Mom’s permission of course; he couldn’t reach the spice cabinet in the kitchen - and she accidentally inhaled some when she ate it. Dad sent both of them back to their rooms for being “obnoxious” at the breakfast table because he was laughing so hard when she sneezed for ten minutes straight.

She isn’t laughing now. She begins to drowsily spoon some oatmeal into her mouth while Mom watches.

“There we go! Eat up so you can be big and strong!” Mom’s voice sounds a little more robotic than usual today. It probably means that Dad has been doing upgrades to her systems again, whatever that means. She didn’t care enough to ask, although she worries that maybe Dad had updated Mom to make sure that she didn’t get sick too.

“That reminds me!” Mom reaches into her apron pocket and pulls out several sheets of paper. “The rest of the children were worried that you would feel lonely down here, so they made some little letters!” She carefully lays down the letters on the side of the bed, near Vanya’s hand. “Hopefully you won’t be so sad now! It will be like they’re always here with you, even though they can’t visit you right now.”

Vanya nods and begins to look over the bits of paper with Umbrella Academy stationery as Mom carefully shuts the heavy metal door behind her. Mom had clearly been the one to write most of these letters, as they have the same clear handwriting on them, but the words on them were genuine enough. Vanya sits back on the small cot and reads the first:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“I heard you were ill because Mom told me, and that also makes me sad. Dad told me that I’m your Number One, so that means that I’m in charge of you, and that means that I also have to take care of you like Mom does. It makes me sad that only Mom can help you while you’re in quarantine, so I suggested we write these letters to you. Since I’m Number One, I asked Mom to give you this one first._

_“I hope you get better soon so that we can play again. I know you think I’m too rough, and because I’m Space Boy people think I’m weird or whatever, but I think you’re really fun to play with and you’re really special too._

_“Get well soon,_

_“Luther.”_

Vanya remembers the first time that she called Luther “Space Boy” instead of his name. She had been playing with one of her dolls when Luther and Diego ran into her room. They were playing tag, she thinks, and in the screamed “IT! NOT IT! IT! NOT IT!” chaos, Luther had knocked over her dollhouse, smashing it into the wall by accident. The plastic went everywhere, and she had cried so hard that Allison had to let her borrow a couple of her dollhouse’s cars so that she and the rest of the Academy could sleep. She had been so angry that she hadn’t called Luther by his name for over a week. I mean, this was before she learned how to yell and cause glasses to break, so what else could she do against a boy like Luther?

Vanya flipped the paper over and moved on to the next one:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“It’s Diego, your brother. I hope you’re not too sick that you’re going to die. Because that would be really not good, and we’d miss you a lot too. Sorry I don’t know what to say; I usually don’t talk like this. Hopefully this helps you get better._

_“Get well soon,_

_“Diego.”_

She smiles weakly at this one. Diego was always one for few words. It’s his speech impediment, she remembers; he has difficulty when he gets emotional. She suddenly has this image of him sitting there at the downstairs kitchen, with Mom holding a pen and writing down what Diego says while he carefully sounds out every word.

Another memory comes to her: one day a couple of months, she sat down with him and she talked with him and when he got excited and started stuttering, she tried to twist the sound so that he slowed down, but it only made him stop talking at all. He said that she was acting all weird and he didn’t want to talk to her anymore, but she didn’t find anything that she did weird.

Vanya looks to the next letter:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“I heard a rumour that you were all better. I don’t think it’ll work on paper but maybe it will. If it doesn’t, then maybe the rest of the letter will help._

_“I miss you a lot now that you’re in quarantine. I still get to hang out with the boys, but it’s not the same as getting to talk to you. Despite that, I have someone to talk to at least. You don’t even that, and I can’t imagine how alone you must feel right now. But it’s only for a little while; once you feel better, you can come back to us and train with us and we could be a big family again._

_“See you soon,_

_“Allison.”_

This is the first one where Vanya actually cries a little as she reads it. Allison always knew what to say. She thinks that maybe it’s part of Allison’s power, beyond the “I heard a rumour” thing. And you know what? She does feel a little better after reading the letter, but not supernaturally so like if Allison’s power had worked.

She thinks about all the other times that she’s talked to Allison. The gentle cadence of Allison’s voice was a real cure-all, she thinks. If she ever felt upset or grumpy or angry, Vanya knew she could go visit Allison. They’d talk about dolls or how obnoxious boys could be sometimes and then they’d laugh for hours and hours. What she wouldn’t give to go see Allison right now, and have her help forget how sad she feels right now.

So she sighs and begins to glance over the next one:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“It’s your brother, Klaus. I miss you a lot, and I’ve heard a lot about people dying from sicknesses, so I’m really worried too. But I think you’ll be okay. Dad says that I might be able to sense if people are about to die, but I can’t tell, so I’m going to take that as a sign you won’t. Not that I would know, I guess?_

_“Miss you lots, by the way. I know that being kept away from the family for a while can start to make you really scared, and while I was only locked up in that tomb for a night and a bit, it was unbearable. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be almost completely alone in a room for over a week. At least you don’t have ghosts yelling at you the whole time, I suppose._

_“Get well soon,_

_“Klaus.”_

Vanya loves Klaus a lot. One time, Allison joked that Vanya and Klaus were going to get married but Vanya didn’t think it was a funny joke. But Allison isn’t too silly to think that; Vanya does spend a lot of time with Klaus.

She likes to think it is because she and Klaus have similar personalities. They are both really artistic, as she plays music and Klaus makes a lot of drawings. They also don’t talk with the other children very much, mostly wanting to be alone a lot of the time. That is, except for when they are together. Then they’d talk for hours. Klaus would show off all of the weird doodles he had made, and Vanya would play some music on the violin.

She really misses the sound of his rambling voice right now. Instead, she sniffles and flips over the next letter:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“I understand that you are ill with some disease that Father will not tell me. I am, naturally, very worried for your health and well-being, but I have faith that you will go through the quarantine period and return more robust than ever. I apologize if I’m being too forward to say that I miss your company…”_

Vanya has difficulty reading the rest and puts the rest of the letter away. Five always seems to like using big words that very few of them understand. That is, except that Dad always seems to know what he is talking about. The two of them would sit in the classroom of the Academy and write all kinds of equations and charts on the chalkboard while arguing loudly with each other. Once, she got a glimpse of Five in a classroom alone, covering every square inch of the chalkboard with intricate, neat mathematics. She has no idea what he’s studying, but it seems way too complex for a child of eight.

Still, she likes Five a lot. She wishes that Mom gave him a name like she had given the rest of them, but Five refused to be given a name. She remembers him mumbling something about names being made-up. But she loves giving him a hard time about, only to have him call her “Seven” with a smirk.

She grabs the last letter in the pile, knowing which child is left:

_“Dear Vanya,_

_“I miss you so much. Mom and I added some cinnamon and brown sugar to your oatmeal this morning. It was my idea! I had a little to make sure that it tasted good, and Mom agreed that it had a pleasant aroma, whatever that means._

_“Training is really boring without you to talk to about it. Dad says that he doesn’t want us talking too much about the special individual training we’re getting, and he won’t tell us a single thing about yours, for some reason, but I’m sure you want to get back to soon!_

_“Get better soon,_

_“Ben.”_

Vanya watches a tear splatter on the paper, causing the ink to run a little. Oh, how she misses them! Ben, most of all. While she loves playing music around Klaus or making fun of Five’s name or the other dynamics that she has with her other siblings, Ben’s little thing with the porridge is the most comforting thing that had happened to her while she has been down here. Ben’s training was always away from everyone else, but Vanya had been planning to spy on him one of these days when she got sick.

Vanya clutches the little packet of letters to her chest and rocks back and forth. The letters haven’t helped at all. Hearing from them, she misses them even more. It’s almost like she can hear them telling her to get well soon. She can hear the discordant ringing beginning in her ears, but her power doesn’t work in here somehow.

Her tearful reverie is interrupted by the sound of the door opening. She looks up to see Mom walking in, a small tray in hand. She can also see Dad, Pogo and Allison behind her.

“Did you read the letters?” Mom asks, her face taking on that weird lack of expression. Vanya nods silently in response, and she continues, “I’m sure it was helpful! Anyway, your quarantine is over!” She gently lays down the tray, on which rests a bottle of pills and a glass of water, the first doses of the medicine that she would take for the rest of her life…

* * *

The door to the side room is violently flung open as the cell door comes crashing down in a shower of sparks. The hinges of the door bend and creak as the discord billowing from the cell threatens to twist the metal into shreds. Vanya steps down onto the doorway, her every footfall a tread towards the destiny that she will soon fulfill. But something draws her attention to the side room, and she turns and begins to walk towards it.

For a moment, the power flowing through her veins subsides just enough that the papers resting on a desk in the room don’t get flung every which way. There is a small bundle of papers tied together with green string resting there, and she picks them up. The familiar handwriting and “Dear Vanya,”’s at the top take her breath away for a moment. She remembers the time she spent down here when she first got diagnosed with whatever bullshit illness Reginald had used to keep her powers a secret. She remembers the pithy little letters that the rest of the Academy wrote to her to try and make her feel better but now only make her rage grow.

She flips through them absent-mindedly, feeling a ghostly tug at her back. Nothing of importance. The ramblings of children that knew nothing about how awful their family really was.

That’s when she notices the paper tucked between Five’s letterand Ben’s. The handwriting is different this time, a hand she recognizes as Reginald’s note-like scrawl. She unfold it and reads it to herself:

_“To Number Seven,_

_“I need to impress upon you the importance of this period in the development of your abilities. I will be frank and say that the powers that you are manifesting are immensely dangerous and could cause considerable damage to others if not controlled. That is why you have been placed in this quarantine; you must learn how to control your abilities without damaging myself or other members of the Academy._

_“However, I have sincere doubts that you will be successful. The incident with my monocle has led me to believe that your powers are simply too strong to be left to develop as they are. Perhaps, when you are older and more emotional stable, we can return to this issue with a greater understanding of how your impertinence has squandered your potential._

_“Until I come to a better understanding of your future, you will be kept here under careful supervision._

_“Kindest regards,_

_“Reginald Hargreeves, Head of the Umbrella Academy.”_

"'Kindest regards' my ass," Vanya thinks to herself. The words “squandered your potential” and “immensely dangerous” keep circling in her head, pounding out a staccato rhythm that feeds her heartbeat. She can feel the wind rise as the discordant sounds begin to build in her heart once more.

With a gasp, she stretches out her hand and the desk, the cork board above it, and the chest of drawers at the other end of the room are crushed by the weight of tons of concrete as the ceiling collapses. She throws the papers into the air and watches them get torn to shreds as the wind shrieks like a hurricane around her.

"Too bad the old man is dead," Vanya whispers to herself as she walks towards the elevator, "I’d have loved to make him watch as my 'potential' robs him of what sad life he had left."

**Author's Note:**

> I am literally vibrating waiting for season 2. I'm really interested to see what the crew is going to get up to in the 60's. 
> 
> I am also a proud member of #GiveVanyaAHappyEnding gang, especially if that happy ending is a girl :)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Give me some kudos if you liked it because I crave validation like Five craves the apocalypse.


End file.
